we have lingered in the chambers of the sea
by teethlikedog
Summary: Not a love song. Dan/Rorschach.


Melodramatic navel-gazing not!porn, set at the bottom of a river somewhere in chapter 10. Title and subtitles from Eliot's _The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock_, pilfered with affection and respect.

**  
we have lingered in the chambers of the sea**

_  
i should have been a pair of ragged claws  
_

The river is a junkyard. Thirty feet down Archie squats among the mud and garbage like some oversized mollusc, murky water washing his windows, startled fish darting past, quicksilver in the gloom. Archie rolls gently in the flow, joints creaking protest at the unaccustomed currents - he's an airship, not a sub, not meant for spending so long submerged. The cabin hums

with the muted throb of engines, whirr of the onboard computer searching, cross-referencing, collating, seeking cohesive patterns in the mire of data. Up above the whole world's going to hell, and Dan's never felt so helpless in his life.

He knows, rationally, that he's doing all he can; they need to wait for nightfall, and in the meantime Archie can find answers faster than he can. Still he feels he should be _doing_ something, not just sitting here, waiting, thinking himself in circles. It's all too heavy, and not just the tonnes of water sitting over their heads. Dan's a wanted fugitive, and the world might be coming to an end any day now, and he's stuck cowering down here, waiting for the dark, with only Rorschach's disapproval for company.

Rorschach, who is still, god, _covered_ in blood, copper stink of it flooding Dan's nose along with grime and stale sweat and, under it all, the acrid smell of prison disinfectant. Rorschach, without his mask, human after all and looking brittle like Dan's never imagined him. His coat is still folded neatly on a seat, gloves and fedora and inkblot mask - static and lifeless now - perched atop and it's wrong, seeing all the familiar mannerisms (a tilt of the head, that quietly belligerent stance) in this stranger with his raw-boned face and flat, hard eyes. His expression is blank but Dan long ago learned to read him in other ways; Rorschach is agitated, impatient, almost crackling with nervous energy. He wants to be active, working, takes Dan's caution for cowardice. Maybe it is. It's not like Dan's ever been brave, not in any way that doesn't involve putting on a costume and beating up criminals; not in any way that ever mattered.

He thinks of Laurie, her lips, the smell of her, the look in her eyes when she stepped away from him, stepped towards Jon, and he wonders if he'll ever see her again. If she'll ever come back at all. He has no idea how long she's been gone, lost track of time hours ago and if it wasn't for the steady tick of Archie's chronometer he'd think it possible they'd been down here days already. It's strange, how little it takes to isolate them entirely from the rest of the world, all its pain and panic; this place is graveyard peaceful, Archie resting torpid among the weeds and dead things, small crawling scavengers in the ooze, the industry of mindless hunger. "Coffin" is not a word Dan wants to think about. Thirty feet down and miles from anything resembling sane, and he's starting to understand the fear of drowning.

"Time?" Rorschach asks with unexpected convergence.

"A little after midday," Dan tells him with a glance at the console clock; hours yet before they can surface. Rorschach gives a dissatisfied grunt and Dan can see the tension in the set of his shoulders, the slight clenching of his fingers against his thighs. He's been watching Rorschach since last night (more than he should, he knows, because it feels like a violation of privacy even if Rorschach's _allowing_ Dan to see his face, but Dan can't help it; twenty years is a long time to wonder) and Rorschach looks to him like a man on the edge. And whatever he might say about surviving there, Dan doesn't want to see what will happen if something pushes him off.

Midday. Hell. Dan's exhausted, eyes raw, mind jittering like a cat on hot bricks, sending his thoughts in unpleasant directions. Rorschach's lived his life on the edge for years, no reason to think he's going to lose his grip (such as it is) all of a sudden. _Sleep_, Dan thinks, _I need some_, and he pulls back his cowl, drops his goggles on the console, tries to get comfortable against the stiff leather of the chair. He doesn't expect to sleep, not like this, sunk in filthy water and Rorschach's eyes on him, silence accusatory as a corpse's, but somehow he does. Or dozes, at least, and wakes twenty minutes later with Rorschach leaning over the console, scanning the readouts with an intensity Dan finds a little frightening, painted so nakedly on a human face.

"Anything interesting?" he asks, yawning. Rorschach starts almost guiltily, waves a terse hand at the monitors.

"Pointless," he growls, an unfamiliar edge to his voice. "Names, dates, lists of inventory. Useless number crunching."

"Maybe," says Dan, a little nettled by the dismissal while simultaneously aware of how silly that is. "But we might as well put Archie's processing power to some use while we're down here."

"Shouldn't be down here. Up there's where we're needed."

"We can't risk going up until it's dark," Dan reminds him, getting to his feet, because he doesn't need Rorschach looming over him like that. Rorschach's face is still impassive but Dan can see the cracks there, flickers of expression that say he's not just impatient, he's frustrated and wound up right to his limit. Dan's pretty sure cabin fever isn't supposed to come on so soon, but then Rorschach's never been one to waste time.

"Look," he says, "I know you're impatient, I know you think we're doing nothing, but you have to understand - "

"No!" Rorschach snarls, punctuates it with a fist slammed into the console's flashing array. "_You're_ the one who doesn't understand, Daniel. Mask killer real, conspiracy bigger than we could have imagined. _Everything_ could depend on our actions now. No time for hesitance."

Dan grabs his wrist and pulls his hand away from the console before he can do any serious damage; only the frame is warped, components thankfully intact. Rorschach's fist is still clenched tight, one knuckle split and oozing blood, and Rorschach is staring at him with something that might be horror or rage. His eyes slide from Dan's face to the hand still grasping his wrist and he yanks his arm away with a small, indescribable sound. Dan knows he's crossed some line, invaded some private territory by touching (always presuming, always getting it wrong; as if looking wasn't bad enough), feels immediately and hugely ashamed of himself, though he's not entirely sure what just happened.

"Rorschach - " he begins, steps forward, hands outspread and conciliatory. Rorschach's eyes meet his, and Dan watches as something fractures inside them, jagged as a snapped bone. A low sound escapes Rorschach's throat, a trapped animal noise, and then he is shoving Dan back against the console and biting at his mouth, hard and vicious, and anything close to familiar vanishes from Dan's world.

_  
senza tema d'infamia  
_

It is nothing like a kiss, with Rorschach growling and sinking teeth in too far, vice-grip on Dan's shoulders like this is a fight. It is violent, and completely _insane_, and Dan's hands come up to push Rorschach away, because he has to explain why this is _not _going to happen, and those same hands end up grasping at Rorschach's shoulders and back, clenching in that bloodstained vest as Rorschach's teeth clash violently with his own. Everything smells like blood and Dan tastes copper in his own mouth and groans and knows this is it, he's completely fucking lost it, but what the hell right? It's the end of the world up there, and down here it's just them and garbage and old bones, nobody to pass judgement if Dan wants this.

(And, a small part of him whispers, haven't you always wanted this, just a little? All those nights in the underworld, just you two against the rot, and didn't his excesses always excite you, his defiance of normality thrill you? Didn't you always want to get behind those masks?)

Dan is hard - god, aching, but he can't even think about trying to change position. This could shatter at any second, any word or mistimed action, and, fuck it, Dan wants to get off before that happens. Rorschach is panting against his shoulder now, breath harsh with arousal or panic, and his hands are still pinning Dan like a suspect, hips pushing against Dan's in a frantic and uncoordinated way. Dan flattens his hands against Rorschach's shoulder blades, feels taut muscles shuddering under his palms, pushes himself against Rorschach in return, legs trembling and hands slipping sweatily and it's like being a kid again, dry humping up against some wall, all terror and mindless greed. Thirty years since he's done something like this and Dan needs it now, sliding his painful erection along the hollow of pelvic bone, clutching at Rorschach's shoulders and sucking in lungfuls of blood and dirt: Rorschach's smell, the smell of the underworld, and something about that seems - not right, nothing about this is right - but appropriate. Dan shuts his eyes, grey blots spreading like bruises behind his lids, swallows a mouthful of blood and comes, hips jerking helplessly. Rorschach is gasping desperation against his throat, clinging to Dan's shoulders like a drowning man to a plank, and then he spasms against Dan once, making a noise halfway between a snarl and a sob, and goes very still.

Dan stays motionless, hands still splayed across Rorschach's back, Rorschach's ragged breaths slowing against his shoulder and his own pulse returning to something resembling normal. He doesn't know what he's supposed to do now, how this is supposed to go. He doesn't have anything he can say or do to make this okay. Rorschach's fingers tighten convulsively on his shoulders and he says, very quietly:

"Daniel - "

Dan holds his breath and waits for that sentence to end, and has no idea of how he wants it to. Long seconds pass, and then Rorschach pushes away, steps back and doesn't look at Dan, staring at the wall like it's the only thing in the world.

"Going to get some sleep," he says. "Suggest you do the same."

_  
human voices wake us, and we drown  
_

Dan sleeps, and his dreams are Kafka cartoons, scuttling on too many legs through dark water, always searching and always useless, always too late for anything that matters. He wakes and finds Rorschach belting his trench coat, sliding on gloves, talking corpses and torture and it's as if nothing ever happened, slate washed clean in black and white ink. And if Dan is a little harsher than he means to be, if he lets Rorschach's apology grip his hand a little too long before pulling away, it's nothing. It's nothing at all.

Archie rises through the Hudson's waters and breaks the greasy surface with a rush, and it's like waking up, like a gasping-breath return to consciousness. The city waits for them, starkly real, conspiracies and impending doom and all; anything else is left below, lost like guilty bones in the waterweed and the mud. It is, Dan thinks, the best they could hope for, and the best he can ever do.


End file.
